Did you know that on almost every day of the year, at least one member of the New York Yankee's all-time roster celebrates a birthday? The posts of the Pinstripe Birthday Blog celebrate those birthdays and offer personal recollections, career highlights, and trivia questions that will bring back memories and test your knowledge of the storied history of the Bronx Bombers.

May 24 – Happy Birthday Bartolo Colon

I remember the first and only time I saw Bartolo Colon pitch live. It was a late season night game in 2000 at Yankee Stadium. The only Yankee hit he allowed that evening was an eighth inning single by Luis Polonia who was then immediately erased on a double play ground ball. I know he had at least a dozen strikeouts that night as he bested Roger Clemens and threw a complete game shutout. When I walked into Yankee Stadium that evening, I was looking forward to watching one of the best pitchers in baseball perform. As I left that evening, I realized I had just witnessed two.

Colon came up with the Indians in 1997 and spent his first five-plus seasons pitching for Cleveland. Just before the trading deadline of the 2002 season, the Indians decided to trade the Dominican right-hander to Montreal for four prospects including Cliff Lee and Grady Sizemore. His record was 10-4 before the trade and he went 10-4 after it, giving Colon his first 20-victory season in the big leagues. Knowing that Colon would be a free agent following the 2003 season and realizing they could never sign him, Montreal traded him to the White Sox. He pitched one year in the Windy City became a free agent and signed a four-year, $50 million deal to pitch for the Angels. He looked like a bargain after the first two seasons of that contract during which he won 39 games including his second 20-victory season and the AL Cy Young Award in 2005. But he tore his rotator cuff pitching against the Yankees in the 2005 playoffs and he spent the next five years recovering from that injury and trying to regain his form.

In January of 2011, the Yankees signed him and told him he could compete for the fourth and fifth spots in the Yankee rotation. He won neither but pitched well enough in spring training to start the year as New York’s long reliever. When Phil Hughes fell apart last April, Colon took his spot in the rotation and pitched very well. By July 2 of last year his record was 6-3 and his ERA just 2.88. He would fade down the stretch and not get re-signed by the Yankees after the 2011 postseason, but I for one will always be grateful for Bartolo Colon’s contribution to that year’s Yankee team.

Update: The above post was originally written in 2011. Since that time, Colon has signed two consecutive one-year contracts to pitch for the Oakland A’s. Last year, he was helping Manager Bob Melvin’s team become the AL West’s surprising division-winner, when in late-August of 2012, he was suspended by Major League Baseball for the use of the MLB-banned substance, testosterone. His record was 10-9 at the time of that suspension. Colon admitted he used the stuff, apologized and then signed with Oakland to pitch for them again in 2013.

It seems that as far as the use of performance enhancing drugs by active MLB players is concerned, the best response for continuing your career unabated after a positive test occurs is to admit your guilt, apologize and serve your suspension. If you attempt to deny it, even for a week or so, as the Giants’ Melky Cabrera did last year when he was having an MVP-type season for the Giants, you’ll be shunned by your team and its fans and forced to find employment elsewhere (Unless of course you hire Ryan Braun’s legal team to get the test results thrown out.)

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